Are you hearing from God?

 He that hath ears to hear, let him hear. Matthew 11:15

We plead and talk to Him in our sufferings!  We cry out to Him in our emotional and physical pain! We ask for hope and joy to be in our days! We have days where we wonder if we should go to the E.R.  Which Dr. should we go to? What treatment should we pursue? When you ask him for help, what do you hear back? Is your answer from man or is it from God? Please think about this a minute before you go on to read ok. Now certainly answers from God can come through man…but that is another letter.

  “Sanctify them in the truth; thy word is truth” John 17:17

One of the main ways that God speaks to us is through his word – the Bible. It's called "The Word" for a good reason. Through his word, God can show us Biblical principles to apply to our lives today! Jesus was saturated in the Scripture; he quoted it continually. Are you reading his word daily? For way too many years, I did not hear from God. Besides not being in the word daily, I did not know him in truth. I did not know his Son. I am so very thankful that I read the book. All of us have the opportunity to get this guidebook for our lives. Go out and get one today!

The LORD is near to all who call on him, to all that call upon him in truth. Psalm 145:18

What are you hearing?

If what you are hearing disagrees with Bible Scripture, it is not of Him. As an example, if you are unmarried and your Dr. tells you to get pregnant with your boyfriend as a treatment plan, this is not from God as it goes against scripture. Now we know that the Bible does not tell us about Progesterone Cream, the CEC and Lupron. Ha if only it were that easy! But the Bible does tell us the ways to hear from God. If we have this relationship with his son Jesus, He can guide us in making decisions. We will have help and direction in our trials.

What are you hearing about God? 
  For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. 2 Timothy 4:3-4

The word of God gives us a warning about one’s preaching another Jesus and preaching of another Gospel.  Be careful of who is at your door and what you are reading! The Bible tells us how to know a false prophet. It also tells us about spiritual deception.Please look up these scriptures. (Deuteronomy 18:21-22, 2 Corinthians 11:3-15; Galatians 1:6-9; 1 Timothy 4:1; 2 Peter 2:1-3; 1 John 4:1-3 and Jude 3-16).  If you do not have a Bible, please write to me and I will send you one for free. Compare everything that you hear to the word of God! Please I plead with you to read it so that you will not be deceived.

  God’s word – the Bible is truth

Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away. (Spoken by Jesus.) Matthew 24:35

The Bible is the inspired word of God. The Holy Spirit breathed upon the human vessels the very thoughts and words He wanted written. This flowed through the human channels involving their emotions, character and personalities. In writing Scripture, God did not use men as machines; He never violated their personality, but rather prepared them for such a high task. The final result was that the Scripture is without any error, omission or inaccuracy for the Holy Spirit guarded and preserved each thought, phrase and word. The Bible claims to be the very Word of God. Though written by some forty different authors over a period of about sixteen centuries, over two thousand times the Bible is spoken of or alluded to as “the “Word of God” (1 Thessalonians 2:13; Hebrews 4:12; Ephesians 6:17; Mark 7:13; Colossians 1:25; John 10:35; Luke 8:11).

Similarly it is called the “Word of the Lord” (Jeremiah 1:2,11; Ezekiel 1:3; Isaiah 1:10; 40:8; Hosea 1:1; Acts 8:25; 13:48; 2 Thessalonians 3:1; 1 Peter 1:23-25).

As a further way of describing itself, the Bible says that it is the word of Christ (Colossians 3:16); the word of life (Philippians 2:16) the word of faith (Romans 10: , the word of truth (Ephesians 1:13) and the scriptures of truth (Daniel 10:21). Or simply and dramatically, the Word (Acts 4:31; 6:4; James 1:21-23; Luke 4:4; 1 Timothy 4:5).

The Bible is the Oracle of God (oracle signifying “the speaking place”). Christianity is present where there is a sincere belief in an infinite and personal God who has not been silent or who has removed Himself from His creation. Rather the true and living God is with us, and has spoken to us. His Law is referred to as “lively oracles” Much every way: chiefly, because that unto them were committed the oracles of God. Romans 3:2

How else do we know the Bible is the truth?

The Manuscript Evidence
The Gospel of John fragment (8:14-22) from the 3rd Century is an Oxyrinchus Papyrus known as the P39 in scholarly circles. It is one of the earliest witnesses in existence to any portion of The New Testament.  www.inkandblood.com
 
What is a manuscript? A manuscript is a hand-written copy of an ancient document that predates the invention of the printing press in 1455. Today there survive 24,633, partial and complete, ancient handwritten manuscript copies of the New Testament alone, not to mention the tens of thousands of Old Testament manuscripts that survive today dating back to as early as the third century B.C. These hand written manuscripts have allowed scholars and textual critics to go back and verify that the New Testament that we have in our possession today is the same New Testament that the early church possessed 2,000 years ago. There also exists today tens of thousands of manuscript copies of the Old Testament proving that the Old Testament was transmitted accurately down through the centuries.

Jesus was crucified in A.D. 30. The New Testament was written between A.D. 48 and 95. The oldest manuscripts date to the last quarter of the first century, and the second oldest A.D. 125. This gives us a narrow gap of thirty-five to forty years from the originals written by the apostles.  There was no great period between the events of the New Testament and the New Testament writings. Nor is there a great time lapse between the original writings and the oldest copies.  With the great body of manuscript evidence, it can be proved, beyond a doubt, that the New Testament says exactly the same things today as it originally did nearly 2,000 years ago.

There was an amazing discovery in 1947. In Israel a shepherd boy tending his father’s sheep in Qumran, north and to the west of the Dead Sea in Israel, made an amazing discovery while looking for a lost sheep. There in Qumran, in a hillside cave that had laid untouched for nearly two thousand years, he discovered an ancient collection of hand written copies of the Old Testament. These scrolls had been hidden in caves by the Essenes, a Jewish sect living in Qumran, 2,000 years ago. These scrolls and writings, now known as “The Dead Sea Scrolls,” represented every book of the Old Testament except the Book of Esther. They are considered one of the greatest discoveries in modern times. These Old Testament manuscripts predate the time of Christ’s birth all the way back to the third century B.C. Its manuscript copies of the Old Testament like this that have allowed Biblical scholars and textual critics to go back and verify that the Old Testament that we have today is the same Old Testament that the Jewish community had before Christ was even born.

The skeptic asks, “How do they know that the Dead Sea Scrolls date back to before Christ?” Scholars determined the age of the scrolls by examining…

1. The pottery that housed the manuscripts.  2. The weave and pattern of the manuscript cloths. 3. The form of the characters.  4. The spelling of the words. 
 5. The coins found alongside the manuscripts.
6. Carbon-14 dating methods were also applied by the University of Chicago.     
You can view some of these manuscripts yourself in places like the British Museum, the Cambridge University Library, the Smithsonian Institute, Oxford University, and the National Library at Paris.

Fulfilled Prophecies
Prophecies from the Old and New Testaments that have been fulfilled also add credibility to the Bible. The Scriptures predicted the rise and fall of great empires like Greece and Rome (Daniel 2:39, 40), and foretold the destruction of cities like Tyre and Sidon (Isaiah 23). Tyre’s demise is recorded by ancient historians, who tell how Alexander the Great lay siege to the city for seven months. King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon had failed in a 13-year attempt to capture the seacoast city and completely destroy its inhabitants. During the siege of 573 B.C., much of the population of Tyre moved to its new island home approximately half a mile from the land city. Here it remained surrounded by walls as high as 150 feet until judgment fell in 332 B.C. with the arrival of Alexander the Great. In the seven-month siege, he fulfilled the remainder of the prophecies (Zechariah 9:4; Ezekiel 26:12) concerning the city at sea by completely destroying Tyre, killing 8,000 of its inhabitants and selling 30,000 of its population into slavery. To reach the island, he scraped up the dust and rubble of the old land city of Tyre, just like the Bible predicted, and cast them into the sea, building a 200-footwide causeway out to the island. Alexander’s death and the murder of his two sons was also foretold in the Scripture. Another startling prophecy was Jesus’ detailed prediction of Jerusalem’s destruction, and the further spreading of the Jewish diaspora throughout the world, which is recorded in Luke 21. In A.D. 70, not only was Jerusalem destroyed by Titus, the future emperor of Rome, but another prediction of Jesus Christ in Matthew 24:1,2 came to pass—the complete destruction of the temple of God.

Messianic Prophecies
In the Book of Daniel, the Bible prophesied the coming of the one and only Jewish Messiah prior to the temple’s demise. The Old Testament prophets declared He would be born in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2) to a virgin (Isaiah 7:14), be betrayed for thirty pieces of silver (Zechariah 11:12, 13), die by crucifixion (Psalm 22), and be buried in a rich man’s tomb (Isaiah 53:9). There was only one person who fits all of the messianic prophecies of the Old Testament who lived before A.D. 70: Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of Mary.

Corroborating Writings
Critics also charge that there are no ancient writings about Jesus outside the New Testament. This is another ridiculous claim. Writings confirming His birth, ministry, death, and resurrection include Flavius Josephus (A.D. 93), the Babylonian Talmud (A.D. 70–200), Pliny the Younger’s letter to the Emperor Trajan (approx. A.D. 100), the Annals of Tacitus (A.D. 115–117), Mara Bar Serapion (sometime after A.D. 73), and Suetonius’ Life of Claudius and Life of Nero (A.D. 120).

Archaeological Evidence
Here is something very recent! First millennium manuscript, open to Psalm 83, found in Irish mud! The book was found open to a Psalm describing attempts to wipe out the name of Israel. Read more about it on CNN. http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/07/25/ireland.psalms.ap/index.html  If you are following what is going on in the Middle East, this is quite astonishing! If you want to know what will happen with Israel, read your Bible! God already told us what will happen. He told us about it 1000’s of years ago! Truth shall spring out of the earth..Psalm  85:11 

Believe! You have every opportunity to check out the resources above to find out if what is written above is the truth or not. I urge you to do some studying and praying. Please read your Bible. God is good and this relationship with his one and only son Jesus is so good! He can help us in our daily struggles; guide us in our treatment decisions. He gives us compassion to help others in pain. He has provided us with help for our depression, anxiety, our loneliness, heartache, anger and bitterness towards some of our Drs. He tells us how to forgive others, how to overcome worry, conquer fear, what to do when tempted, how to train our children. He can give us peace, rest, contentment, discipline and salvation! He gives us hope. Everything we need is in the book! Please take time the time to read at least 15 minutes per day. If you have not read the Bible before, I suggest starting in the book of John, which is the 4th book of the New Testament.

 Dear Heavenly Father, We pray for those who do not have this relationship with you Lord. Please show them your word and give them strength and the desire to read your word daily. Show them your love that surpasses all understanding and show them how to have this relationship. For those who do know you, please strengthen them in this relationship with you and help them to remain and walk in your ways. In Jesus Name, Amen.

Thy word is a lamp to my feet, and a light to my path Psalm 119:105

To all who received him, to those who believe in his name, he gave the right to become children of God -- children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God. John 1:12-13

In Christ  Lori 
References: www.livingwaters.com & www.alwaysbeready.org
Richard M. Fales, Ph.D.  Scripture quoted from the NIV & KJV